Wi-Fi uses a number of smaller antennas, called "nodes, " to build a mesh network.
But the Sonos Digital Music System takes a fundamentally different approach, using a mesh network to deliver music to multiple rooms.
Think Automatic's Luminode dimmer switch hides both a processor and a mesh network connection that lets every switch in the home coordinate with each other.
Going deeper down the rabbit hole, Radiator Labs is exploring some nifty technologies such as an Xbee mesh network, which it's using to evaluate the energy-saving benefits at play.
The big idea: putting sensors everywhere that communicate in a mesh network and allow real-time tracking and optimization of everything from traffic to the power grid to the water supply.
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The city of Taipei, Taiwan, is currently deploying a mesh network that will eventually blanket the city, installing wireless mesh antennas on street lamps, in train stations and on the side of buildings.
Police and firemen and other city employees in Medford, Oregon, have this year started using a mesh network to connect to the internet while on the road, but very few ordinary consumers are meshers.
Also important, this processing power combined with advanced digital radio interface and signaling capabilities enables small-cell base stations to operate in a more efficient and dynamic mesh network, as opposed to a relatively static, point-to-point macro only system.
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In the very near future, the North American power grid will be populated by a bewildering array of distributed energy resources ranging from building-integrated solar photovoltaics and micro-cogen to intelligent control systems and mesh network lighting.
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The change came as Itron's research group in Paris realized it could exploit inexpensive new wireless chips and open-source software to create a so-called mesh network of electric meters that passed information among themselves, like firemen in a bucket brigade, instead of relying on expensive and less reliable individual connections to the Internet.
Zerocoins would theoretically mesh seamlessly with the Bitcoin network, could be traded and spent in the same way as Bitcoins, and could be redeemed for a Bitcoin at any time.
Once equipped with mesh-enabled devices, soldiers fanning out on a field or firefighters in a burning building could create an impromptu network, automatically transmitting communications from person to person until returning back to commanders.
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